Minecraft is a big hit now, despite it's price of 15 Euros and it's Beta test status.
I bought the game back when it was in alpha test, since then I've been mashing mountains, cutting down trees and slaughtering (or being slaughtered) the fauna, all of this to build structures, just like legos !
There is not realy a point to Minecraft, you are free in a randomly generated world composed of stone, sand, grass, water, trees, and monsters ! All of those being raw materials for your buildings, tools, weapons, armor and food. For the momment you don't even need any of those, you can survive without using any of it, but in the later patches you will have to eat and drink to survive, but of course, when the night falls down, monsters will track you down.
And inevitably, you will build, not only because you have to, but because you can.
Minecraft is a reak commentary on human behavior. It puts you in a sandbox with unlimited power and one condition: To create anything, you must destroy something else. It’s a lesson on natural resources, which might seem painfully obvious if so many other games didn’t stuff players with unlimited ammo and health-restoring chicken hidden in trash cans. It is a beautiful model of humanity’s need to destroy and rebuild.
That message is never forced on the player. It’s implied in the system Minecraft creates. And when the revelation strikes, as you’re digging into another mountain, chopping down another tree, butchering another cow, the joke’s on you.
